Experian · 2023–24 · Lead Product Designer

Credit Center

Credit monitoring that tells people what to do next — mobile-first, personalized, and white-label ready.

Consumer fintechMobile-firstWhite-labelPersonalization

98.4
System Usability Scale score: +46%
Engagement with insights: 100%
Of testers rated it Excellent or better

The problem

Experian’s white-label credit monitoring product is what a bank’s customers see when they tap “Credit score” in their banking app. It reached millions of people through partners — and most of them looked at their score once and never came back.

The existing experience read like a blog. Key tools were buried, the mobile experience was an afterthought, and it lagged well behind Credit Karma and NerdWallet. Engagement was low, and partners were starting to ask why they should keep paying for it.

Before: a long, text-heavy page. Three identical score dials, a paragraph explaining what a credit score is, and the useful tools somewhere below the fold.

My role

Lead Product Designer — UX strategy, research, and UI design, working with a product manager, a content strategist, and the engineering team building the white-label component system.

What users told us

We interviewed current users of the product across several partner banks. Four quotes shaped the brief:

“I checked my score once, but there’s no reason to come back. Nothing changes, and I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do here.”

“I didn’t even realize there were tools to help me improve my credit. They’re buried — I had to click around a lot to find anything useful.”

“I mostly check my credit on my phone, but the site isn’t easy to use. I have to scroll for days to read everything.”

“Credit Karma makes it easier to understand what’s affecting my credit. This one just throws a bunch of information at me.”

Competitive analysis of Credit Karma, NerdWallet, and WalletHub — similarities, differences, learnings, and where we could do better.

Strategy

Four bets, in priority order:

Ideation

Early wireframes: dynamic alert cards, a score planner, the overview layout, and the 'what changed' pattern that became the heart of the product.

The design

After: score and history together, 'what changed this month' immediately below, and two specific actions — boost your score, get more credit — with current-versus-potential numbers.

The score history component. Tapping any point explains what moved the score that month.

Dynamic recommendation cards. The copy and the action change with the user's profile and life stage.

Credit Academy: a score simulator that answers 'what if' before the user makes a financial decision, plus a learning center.

White-label, proven

The same components, two partner brands. This is what sold the system internally: partners could ship something that felt like their own product in days, not quarters.

Testing

Usability testing was run against the high-fidelity prototype with users of partner banks. Every participant rated the experience Excellent or Best Imaginable, and the product scored 98.4 on the System Usability Scale — well above the 68 average. Users consistently preferred it to the credit monitoring tool they were already using.

Rationale. The one recurring note — the simulator was hard to find — was fixed before launch.

Outcome

98.4 SUS in testing.
46% increase in user interactions with credit insights after launch.
A modular white-label system that partners could brand and ship without an Experian design review.